Consequently all thoughts of fires for warmth during the cold nights, when they would have been most welcome, were abandoned; while the men eagerly volunteered for cooks' assistants; and the officers were not above gathering in the old furnace-place of a night, after the cooking was over, for the benefit of the warmth still emitted by the impromptu oven. Meanwhile every economy possible was practised, and the fuel store jealously guarded. The said fuel store consisted of every bone of the slaughtered animals that could be saved, and even the hides; these, though malodorous, giving out a fine heat when helped by the green faggots, which were in turn started ablaze by chips of the gradually broken-up wagons. Then, too, the veldt was laid under contribution, men going out mounted, and furnished with sacks, which they generally brought back full of the scattered bones of game which had at one time swarmed in the neighbourhood, but had been ruthlessly slaughtered by the Boers. So the days glided on, with not the slightest prospect, apparently, of our escape. "Every one's getting precious impatient, Val," said Denham one day when we were idling up on the walls with his field-glass, after lying listlessly chatting about the old place and wondering what sort of people they were who built it, and whether they did originally come gold-hunting from Tyre and Sidon. "Yes," he added, "we are impatient in the extreme." "It doesn't seem like it," I replied; "the men are contented enough." "Pooh! They're nobody. I mean the officers. The chief's leg's pretty nearly right again, and he was saying at mess only yesterday that it was a most unnatural state of affairs for British officers to be forced by a set of low-bred Dutch Boers, no better than farm-labourers, to eat their beef without either mustard, horse-radish, or salt." "Horrible state of destitution," I said quietly. "None of your sneers, Farmer Val," he cried. "He's right, and I'm getting sick of it myself. He says it is such an ignoble position for a mounted corps to suffer themselves to be shut up here, and not to make another dash for freedom." "Well, I shall be glad if we make another attempt to get through their lines," I said thoughtfully. "That's what the Major said, when, hang me! if the chief didn't turn suddenly round like a weathercock, and say that what we were doing was quite right, because we held this great force of Boers occupied so that the General might carry out his plans without being harassed by so large a body of men." "That's right enough," I said. "Don't you get blowing hot and cold," cried Denham, with impatience. "Then some one else sided with the Colonel. It was the doctor, I think. He said the General must know when, where, and how we were situated, and that sooner or later he would attack the Boers, rout them, and set us at liberty." "That sounds wise," I hazarded.